This is an awesome car wrapped in the dreaded Mercedes C040 paint code. The owner bought it lightly used (8000 miles) and had some front end damage repaired. As expected, whoever buffed the car last apparently used a wool pad and put in rotary holograms without removing any of the spider swirls or bothering to clay the car.
I started off with an ONR wash and
Meguiars white (consumer) clay. All the horizontal panels were pretty contaminated. Once I had finished, the paint was glass smooth but looked like this:
Knowing how hard Mercedes CeramiClear paint is, I started off with
Meguiars #105 using a yellow
Meguiars polishing pad @ 1200 rpm
I was suprised how well #105 was quickly cleaning up the paint, much easier than the black C5 I had done a few weeks ago. Less holograming too. I then changed to a blue Swirlbuster pad (softer than a typical polishing pad) and went over the paint again with #105 at 1200 rpm, finishing at 1000 rpm.
#105 + yellow then blue pads
After #105, I switched to 3M Ultra Fine Machine Polish (aka Ultrafina) using a yellow
Meguiars polishing pad @ 1000-1800-1000 rpms
These half 'n half shots are of the above 3 steps.
These pictures were also taken after the above 3 steps.
Some days, I have a stack of pads and several polishes next to the car trying to find the right combo. Luckily, Ceramiclear is pretty straight forward paint to work.
Linear Mode
